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| Public discussion: Public Trust in the Criminal Justice System – an Instrument for Penal Policy Assessment
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 On May 11, 2011, the Center for the Study of the Democracy organized a public discussion on Public Trust in the Criminal Justice System – an Instrument for Penal Policy Assessment. At the event the organizers presented an analysis of survey results on the Bulgarian society’s level of confidence in the criminal justice institutions, on the public attitudes towards the level of corruption in these institutions and the subjective perceptions of fear of crime.
 Dr. Maria Yordanova, CSD Law Program Director, opened the event noting that the development of a system of indicators measuring the trust in the criminal justice and also applying it as an instrument for shaping and conducting policies is responding directly to one of the priorities of the EU’s Stockholm Programme for development in the area of security and justice for 2010-2014.
In her introductory words she said that the test results of the developed indicators of fall-2010 showed that Bulgarians had the lowest levels of trust in both the state institutions and the system of criminal justice among all EU countries. In fall 2011, the developed indicators will be used in the Round Five of the European Social Survey, which will cover 30 states.
 Dr. Todor Galev, CSD Economic Program Senior Analyst, presented the survey results. He explained that two main factors are forming the public trust - the trust in the efficiency of public institutions, the procedural fairness and fair treatment of the citizens on one hand and the legitimacy of the institutions, the rule of law, and the sharing of moral norms, which to generate an obligation of holding and executing the decisions taken.
The survey data showed that less than 50 % of the citizens made a favorable evaluation of the performance of the police and less than 20 % assessed favorably the courts. Almost 30 % of the respondents assessed negatively courts’ fairness and barely 8 % believed that courts take fair decisions. The distinct difference in the attitudes is due to the type of the source of information – on the one side this is the personal experience and on the other side this is the media.
Dr. Galev said that the extremely low rate of trust determines a situation of uncertainty in the Bulgarians and provokes fear that they might fall victim to a crime. That perception of fear significantly exceeds the actual occurrence of such incidents.
 Mr. Dimitar Markov, CSD Law Program Senior Analyst, said that the work of the state institutions diverges the society’s expectations and the state should take into account these discrepancies when forming its policies. Several factors affect negatively the public attitudes-, namely, the lack of demonstration of cooperation among the institutions, the criticism which the criminal justice system receives by their European partners, including the European Commission, and the perception for the failure of the judiciary and the police to deal with internal corruption.
 Mr. Ruslan Stefanov, CSD Economic Program Director, drew attention the tendency observed during the last few years, that the confrontation between the police and the courts had left the prosecution aside of the problems with public trust in justice. He concluded that the lack of trust in public institutions affects the political process in the country and the independence of the judiciary system should no longer be perceived as lack of supervision.
CSD Brief No 29: Public Trust in the Criminal Justice System – an Instrument for Penal Policy Assessment
Presentation by Dr. Todor Galev, CSD Economic Program Senior Analyst (Adobe PDF, 290 KB) (in Bulgarian)
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